Dr Andrew Green

Research interests

An ethnomusicologist and popular music scholar, Andrew’s research focuses on the music industries in Mexico. It examines intersections between musical practice, politics, activism, urban geography, economics, and technology. In keeping with the interdisciplinary focus of this research, his academic background is diverse; Andrew completed his undergraduate studies in Music and Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, before studying for a Master’s at the University of East Anglia’s School of International Development. Andrew then went to Royal Holloway, University of London, to undertake doctoral studies in Ethnomusicology. His PhD dissertation focused on activist musicians performing in support of the pro-indigenous rights, anti-capitalist Zapatista movement; as such, it engaged with key questions about performances of music intended to effect political change. How do instrumental or strategic goals co-exist with ongoing, “prefigurative” ones in activist musicianship? What role can music play in knitting together activist networks, and what kinds of music do such networks encourage? How do activist musicians find, or create, spaces for performance when their values conflict with those dominant within the society around them?

Following completion of his PhD, Andrew spent eighteen months teaching at University of the West of Scotland’s School of Media, Culture, and Society, and as a Visiting Professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, before moving to the University of Glasgow in 2018 to take up a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship. This Fellowship funds the project “Sonic Trajectories of Censorship in Mexico”, which studies histories and perceptions of censorship in the independent music scene in Mexico.

Outside of this project, Andrew’s research interests include shamanism and witchcraft in southern Mexico, and the ways that the so-called “anarchist turn” in anthropology may be used to make sense of marginal musical practices. He has work published and forthcoming in Ethnomusicology Forum, Popular Music, and Popular Music and Society.

Grants

2011-2014: Arts and Humanities Research Council, PhD studentship, Royal Holloway, University of London

2018-2021: Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship, “Sonic Trajectories of Censorship in Mexico”, University of Glasgow